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"The story began in Harold Macmillan’s “never had it so good” ’50s Britain. It should be fiction: four teenagers with no more than eight O’Levels between them, running and biking and busing and busking all over Liverpool in search of new chords and old guitars and half-decent drum kit and any gig at all.

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Product Description

Product Description

2CD set 2003 remastered pre-Phil Spector original mixes version with bonus disc of rehearsals & studio chat. This version is NOT in the recent Beatles Stereo / Mono box sets!

Amazon.co.uk

How much better, you could be forgiven for wondering, could Let It Be be? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is "a bit". Let It Be, while obviously better than almost everything ever recorded by anyone else, was compromised by the fact that the Beatles were disintegrating as a unit during the recording sessions, the rancour most famously illustrated by John Lennon calling in Phil Spector behind Paul McCartney's back to rework "The Long and Winding Road". Let It Be... Naked, then, is the album as the Beatles would have heard it while they were making it.

The tracklisting on this version of Let It Be differs slightly from the original--there's no "Maggie Mae" or "Dig It", while "Don't Let Me Down" has been added. The rest of the songs, shorn of Spector's decorative flourishes, confirm that although the Beatles were having occasional difficulty speaking to each other during these sessions, there was no problem about playing together. The only two minor quibbles are that "The Long and Winding Road" is still McCartney at his most saccharine, and that any Beatles version of "Across the Universe" is never going to hold a candle to that by Laibach. --Andrew Mueller

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Whether you love or hate the original "Let It Be" ...personally I found it a good album but by no means one of their best...this release is a product of McCartney's determination to set the record straight on how the album should have sounded.Whilst he was absolutely right to remove the 2 Lennon abherrations ("Dig It" and "Maggie Mae")replacing them with the vastly superior Lennon song "Don't Let Me Down" listeners will not necessarily prefer the simpler versions of the other songs.Ultimately its a matter of taste - the orchestrated original v the McCartney alternative is for you to choose. For myself I'm a Beatles fan so I'll take both as they are both good & serve a purpose!!!*The extra CD of the Beatles rehearsing is great by the way!

Well, here we are, nearly 45 years after. An awful lot of text has been devoted to this "album" in its various forms: the Spectorised original, the Glyn Johns mixes and now this Naked (silly term, Paul, nothing naked about it) version. Much of this ado has been about what might have been (coulda, shoulda, woulda) which IMO has no place in a review, which serves best by being about what's there, and not what should or might have been.

Having said that, here I go, ignoring my own advice; the Let It Be sessions (which are just that), in whatever released form. lend themselves to criticism of this nature. Why? It's the Beatles, about whom more words have probably been written/uttered than any other pop culture phenomenon. So what's a few more?

The Glyn Johns sessions are available from illicit sources, and need no further words. The subject album "Naked" is an improvement. On what, you may ask? Certainly, to my ears, a more pleasing mix: Spector royally screwed up the tracks he had a direct hand in (Let It Be, Long And Winding, I Me Mine, Across The Universe): strings, choirs, etc. Some other tracks are certainly different performances, and Don't Let Me Down replaces Maggie Mae and Dig It. I would rather have left the latter snippets alone (especially Maggie, an old skiffle-y song about a LIverpool prostitute), but generally, having Don't Let Me Down included is the real bonus here, and its presence more than justifies the re-release/rejig of the album. Unfortunately, removing the Lennon witticisms ("I dig a pygmy ...") and the two snippet tunes also removes much of the fun of the original release.Read more ›

"Let it Be" is the Beatles' most controversial record, given the roiling tensions within the group and with producer Phil Spector. We all know that this album was initially titled "Get Back" and recorded before the monumental "Abbey Road" LP. Paul McCartney never liked the idea of Spector, known for his sweeping orchestral arrangements, tampering with the group's sound. He had major issues with the string arrangements on tracks like "The Long And Winding Road" and "Across the Universe" which even some critics say were a bit overproduced and glossed up. Well, 33 years after that release, "Let it Be" is re-issued sans Spector's production, and it very much sounds like the raw rock album McCartney probably wanted. This is especially evident on tracks like "The Long And Winding Road" (a de-Spectorized version of this track can also be heard on the Beatles "Anthology 3") and George Harrison's "I Me Mine." But the tracklisting here is different. For one, there's the excellent "Don't Let Me Down," which was previously available only on the "Blue" and "Hey Jude" compilations. This version is definitely more rough in tone, with the guitars projecting with more force than I remembered. So is "Let it Be" better naked or with clothes on? Personally, I like both versions equally. Fans who have been clamoring to hear this album "as nature intended" will definitely have their curiosity satisfied. It was never really the group's strongest effort, but it's still a noteworthy album from a group whose influence can't be overestimated.

If you have ever been fortunate enough to watch The Beatles Anthology, then it should be easy enough to assess that Paul McCartney, for all his wonderful talent, is an absolute control freak. For good or bad, this is a trait that drives perfectionism, and in the case of 'Let It Be... Naked' it was a chance for the guy to go back and, essentially, recompile one of The Beatles most interesting albums.

Was this needed in the first place? I guess that comes down to personal taste. Whilst I enjoy many tracks on the original Let It Be album, there is something incomplete about the whole project, and that's quite understandable when one considers the pressure that Phil Spector was under to sort out the mess of tapes and recordings made. I don't rate Spector highly as a producer, but the disarray of the band can't have helped his position.

Then we arrive at one important factor; no matter how much a listener dresses it up, 'Let It Be... Naked' is essentially Paul's album. The fact that he may suggest this was how it "should" have sounded is only backed up by his own satisfaction, and not the other band members. This is a stark, but simple truth.

Either way, 'Let It Be... Naked' is actually a very nice template, to put it one way. From start to finish the experience is a lot tighter, and perhaps more satisfying as a narrative rather than the more disjointed feel of the original. That's not to say it doesn't have its faults however, for although the arrangement and choice of songs is an improvement, I feel that some of the actual changes in production do no favours to those songs.Read more ›